Where We Used to Roam by Jenn Bishop (sites to read books for free .TXT) 📕

is in Austin’s room when we get to the hospital, so Dad and I linger in the hallway. Outside the door is a whiteboard with my brother’s name in blue erasable marker. But they didn’t spell his name correctly. They wrote “Austen” instead, like that author my ELA teacher always raved about. I consider wiping my finger on the board, correcting it, but someone must have walked off with the marker, and anyway, it’s not like I want Austin to be in there. Maybe if I leave it up, some different person is in there instead of my brother.

But I know that’s not true because I can hear Mom’s voice as she asks the nurse questions. Dad’s shoulders slump as he stares at the wall. He keeps taking his phone out of his pocket, checking it, and putting it back.

The nurse startles when she exits the room. “Tony? Sorry, I didn’t realize you were out here. You know you can come in, right?” The way she calls him Tony instead of Mr. O’Malley makes me think she knows him from the weather. That she’s maybe even a fan.

“Oh, that’s okay. My wife’s got things covered.” He presses a hand to my back. “This is our daughter, Emma.”

She shakes my hand. “Holly,” she says. “Nice to meet you, Emma.”

“You too,” I say, even though it’s not nice at all, actually. Does she forget why we’re here? It’s not like my imaginary big sister had a baby. We’re here because Austin overdosed. He was supposed to get better. That’s what thirty days on Cape Cod was all about. That expensive rehab facility Mom and Dad made five billion phone calls to get him into, it was supposed to fix him.

But it didn’t. And now I’m not sure what will.

When we enter the room, Mom leaps up from the chair beside the hospital bed and hugs me tightly. “Em.” A tear slips out of my eye, but I’m still pressed against her and it melts into her linen sweater. I’m the first to pull away.

Is it weird that I haven’t even looked at him yet? My brother, tucked into blankets, attached to wires, connected to a machine that monitors—at least, I think—his heart. Jagged green lines and red numbers on a screen. I don’t know what they mean, though I bet if I ask Mom or Dad, they’ll tell me. That’s my brother—that’s Austin under those blankets with his head turned away from me. Sleeping. Just sleeping. Still alive.

A lump forms in my throat as I rewind, back, back, back, all the way to the fall, before everything changed. Austin’s hand wrapped around the brown leather of a football, his fingertips on the white stitches. The cool air, the crunch of dead leaves. Becca and Kennedy and Lucy next to me in the stands.

We both made mistakes this year. Me and Austin. And we didn’t tell each other about them the way we used to. The secrets we’d share when we were younger, stuff we’d never tell Mom or Dad. That time Austin broke the garage window and confessed only to me after swearing to Dad that he had no idea how it happened. That time I cheated on a spelling test in second grade and felt so guilty I had to tell someone, so I told him. We kept them for each other, the secrets.

And maybe that’s why he couldn’t tell me this time. This mistake was so big, too big for anyone else to keep secret. So he kept it all to himself.

But now we’re here. In this too-cold hospital room on a late July night.

Someone has to say something eventually, so it might as well be me. “It wasn’t fair,” I say. Not to Austin, but to my parents. “It wasn’t fair for you to send me away. You took it for granted that I—”

“I know,” Mom says. “It wasn’t fair to punish you. You hadn’t done anything wrong. I’m sorry, Emma. If we could do it all over again, I—”

“No!” I can’t let her keep thinking that somehow I was the good kid and Austin was the bad one. It wasn’t that way at all. There’s no such thing as the good kid. No one is ever all good, not me, not Mom, not Dad, not Tyler or Becca, not anyone. “Stop saying that.”

“Saying what?” Mom asks.

“That I didn’t do anything wrong. I did. You just don’t know about it.”

Dad cuts in. “What are you talking about, E?”

“What happened at Camp McSweeney with Becca. That night in the cabin. She—I—I ruined it. I totally betrayed her.”

“Em, honey, slow down.” Mom hands me a tissue from her purse, but it’s not enough. I blow right through it, snot all over my hands, not that I care. Snotty hands are the least of my problems. “It’s okay.”

But it’s not. Nothing’s okay. I’m melting down. Austin’s lying there asleep. Dad looks like a truck drove over him in the night. I sit down at the edge of Austin’s bed to catch my breath, and when I finally do, I tell them everything. How it felt with Kennedy and Lucy. That’s what friends were supposed to be. People who got you in every possible way. I never thought that Kennedy would open her big mouth like that so the whole school would know about the kitty blanket. I didn’t mean to be mean. But I was anyway.

I wasn’t the good kid. Not even close.

And Austin? I’m his sister. I should’ve known something was wrong. That night he wouldn’t tell me where he was going, I should’ve told Mom and Dad. Even if it would have made him mad at me. I should’ve done it anyway.

Dad stops me there. “Oh, E. Please don’t blame yourself for what happened with Austin. We didn’t know—none of us. And part of me believes even if he tried to tell us, we would’ve been in denial. None of what has happened with Austin is your fault.”

“Your dad’s right,”